1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed and claimed herein generally pertains to a method for providing information regarding website browsing activity, carried out by a web client or other user. More particularly, the invention pertains to a method of the above type wherein information regarding previous website browsing by a user is presented in the form of a visual display, which primarily comprises pictures or other non-textual symbols. Even more particularly, the invention pertains to a method of the above type wherein alternative techniques are available, for using the visual representation to search for an item of information associated with a previously visited website.
2. Description of the Related Art
Browsing the Internet and visiting websites is an increasingly common and continually growing activity. This activity is undertaken by a vast and diverse spectrum of users, for correspondingly diverse reasons. In browsing the Internet, it is common to visit a succession of sites, with one site linking to another site, which in turns links to another. Additionally, in the course of a search the website user may access one or more sites by entering their respective addresses, wherein these sites are not linked in any way to one another or to any previously accessed sites.
Frequently, it can happen that some time after an Internet browsing session has been conducted, such as a few days or a few hours thereafter, the Internet user will seek to return to a particular site that was previously visited. For example, the user may desire to access a remembered item of information, or may seek to carry out an action that can be performed at the particular site. However, in these situations, the user may be unable to recall the address or identity of the particular website, and cannot otherwise remember how to access the website quickly because the web address history file bus was cleared, for example to minimize cookie tracking processes. In this event, the user may be very inconvenienced, or may even be required to expend a significant amount of effort in order to locate the website. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide the user with a handy and comparatively simple tool or mechanism to assist him in quickly and efficiently locating the particular website.
While various approaches are currently available for providing a user's website browsing history, these tend to be cumbersome and are often inadequate. Some techniques, for example, furnish website lists that indicate websites visited during a previous period, and are sorted on the basis of the most visited websites. In other prior art techniques, a history navigation tree is used, to show links to interrelated electronic data. Still other techniques disclose web pages that are interconnected to one another by means of web links. These techniques, however, generally do not keep track of browsing events wherein a user accesses a site by independently addressing it, rather than by hyperlinking to the site from a previously accessed site. Accordingly, such techniques may be unable to produce a complete record or history of all websites visited by a user during a browsing session. They also do not provide pictorial or symbolic representations of browsing history, along with a timeline or the like.